1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method of strengthening glass plate, and particularly, to a method of efficiently strengthening glass plate.
2. Description of Related Art
A glass plate has the characteristics of desirable transparence, a well supporting property, great weather resistance, and chemical stability, etc. Therefore, glass plate is widely used in various fields, for example, house appliances such as building materials, furniture, and the like, or technical products such as a display screen, electronic devices, and the like.
In the application of technical products, glass plate is used as a substrate for a display screen, a carrier of an electronic device, a carrier of a touch panel, and the like. Once the glass plate is broken or cracked, the products are damaged and can not be used. Accordingly, the reliability of the products deeply depends on the mechanical strength of the glass plate. Particularly in a portable product, the strength of the glass plate applied therein is much emphasized.
For facilitating desirable strength, glass plate is treated by a strengthening process before being applied in products. The strengthening process can be a physical strengthening process or a chemical strengthening process. The physical strengthening process is performed by rapidly cooling down to a high temperature glass plate, that is, a quench process, so as to form a surface layer with high stress robustness on the surface of the glass plate. The chemical strengthening process uses the principle of ion exchange to replace the ions with smaller radius on the surface of the glass plate by ions with larger radius to form the ion exchanging surface layer.
FIG. 1 illustrates a schematic view of the state of an untreated glass plate. Referring to FIG. 1, a glass plate 100 has a plurality of pores 102 on the surface. The glass plate 100 can be contaminated by the ambient particles or oxidized by the atmospheric oxygen during the storage period before being strengthening. Therefore, the pores 102 of the glass plate 100 in different areas have various sizes and depths, and the distribution of the pores 102s is quite uneven. That is to say, the variation of the pores 102 in a unit area is significant. Accordingly, the chemical strengthening process can not be performed evenly and efficiently on the surface of the glass plate 100. Even if the chemical strengthening process is performed, an uneven distribution of the stress is presented when the glass plate 100 sustains an outer stress, and therefore, the glass plate 100 can be strengthened merely to a limited degree. Specifically, the strength of the glass plate 100 can be enhanced; however, the stress is locally concentrated due to the uneven distribution of the pores 102 so that the strengthening degree of the glass plate 100 is limited after the chemical strengthening process.